Advancing Medicine with Extended Reality
With $5M in funding from NSF and the private sector, Amitabh Varshney is leading a multi-institutional effort focused on developing, testing and regulating immersive technologies used in health care. MORE
Rita Colwell working in lab
Colwell Launches Disease Forecasting Center and App
Funded by a $1M grant from NASA, the project is the culmination of her life's work to prevent and predict cholera and other diseases. MORE
Alums Named to TIME's List of 100 Most Influential People
CBCB graduates Michael Schatz and Adam Phillippy are being honored for their leadership in sequencing the first full human genome. MORE
Champion of Women in Computer Science Retires
Jan Plane initiated numerous support programs that have made UMD a national leader in women studying computer science. MORE
Four Faculty Members Receive Academic Promotions
(clockwise from bottom left) Pratap Tokekar, John Dickerson, Abhinav Bhatele and Cornelia Fermüller have all been promoted. MORE
Sparsity Optimization Expert Asgari Joins UMIACS
Bahar Asgari, a computer architect and artist, studies recommender systems, data corruption, and more. MORE
Parallel Algorithm Designer Dhulipala Joins UMIACS
The overarching goal of Laxman Dhulipala's research is to design, analyze and implement parallel algorithms that are faster and more efficient. MORE
Elizabeth Bennewitz headshot
QuICS Graduate Student Awarded DOE Fellowship
The Department of Energy will support Elizabeth Bennewitz's research on large many-body quantum systems for four years. MORE
Ridge is a Jack of All Technical Trades
Senior IT operations manager Edward “Joe” Ridge has had many roles in his 25 years at UMIACS, yet he is most proud of building and managing the student-staffed Help Desk. MORE
Cummings Awarded $2.7M to Study Impacts of Aging on the Brain
The NIH award will support his team’s ongoing research using machine learning techniques to interpret “multiomics” data. MORE
His 2012 paper was one of the first to use computer vision to produce descriptions of images. MORE
Williams Works to Improve Robotic Sensing Capabilities
Computing Innovation Fellow Troi Williams uses machine learning to predict sensor measurement accuracy in robotic systems. MORE
Their papers covered security education, online protection for at-risk users, and blocklisting. MORE
Dumitraș and Tokekar Receive Funding from Amazon
Amazon Science is funding Dumitraș to measure the effectiveness of malware detectors, and Tokekar to develop risk-aware multi-robot coordination algorithms. MORE
Developing Algorithms to Predict the Spread of Diseases
A new tool developed by Rita Colwell will help health officials track the spread of pathogens like COVID-19. MORE
Rewriting the Second Law of Thermodynamics
Nicole Yunger Halpern was interviewed by Quanta Magazine about new arguments on the second law of thermodynamics that are based in quantum information. MORE

Director's Message

Our faculty are growing both professionally and in numbers. Please join me in welcoming our newest faculty and congratulating those who were recently promoted. MORE
Previous issues of UMIACS Interface can be read here.
Contact umiacs@umd.edu to submit a story idea.